By PHK
Updated January 25 to include EA proclamation reference
As Informed Comment’s Juan Cole pointed out, the January 12 small anti-tank missile attack on the American Embassy in Athens suggests yet again that anti-American terrorist threats do not necessarily have Islamic connections.
It also shows that the use of violence for political purposes among Greece’s extreme left lives on. This despite the summer 2002 round-up of November-17 (N-17) – or most of N-17 - the country’s deadliest terrorist group to date whose ideology represented a bizarre blend of Trotskyite Communism and Greek ultra-nationalism.
Unfortunately, no one has let Mr. Bush in on either “secret.” You’d think he’d have caught on by now to the fact that various groups here and abroad use terrorism for political purposes and not all are Muslim – after all it is six years after 9/11 - but obviously not.
Meanwhile, Ws never-ending “war on terror” rages on, based on its simplistic and mistaken vision of us-versus-them. For Bush-43 to admit the existence of the complexities of terrorism and the differing motives of terrorists would undermine the rationale for his administration’s ill-begotten “stay-the-course-now-decked-out-in-new-clothes-also-designed-to-fail” Iraq policy. This doesn’t even get into the administration’s Israel right-or-wrong or Iran-baiting policies which, in my view, also closely relate to W’s latest errors vis-à-vis Iraq.
The Athens American Embassy bathroom bombing
“They came, they fired, they missed, they fled” – former US diplomat Brady Kiesling, Kathimerini Greek edition, January 14, 2007. Here's the English translation from Kiesling's webpage.
From what I’ve seen reported thus far, Friday’s almost 6 a.m. launch of a small anti-tank missile (RPG-7 with a 40mm diameter of Chinese origin circa 1974) that damaged a tiny part of the American Embassy’s façade, broke a window and some ceiling tiles in a bathroom near the Ambassador’s office. It mostly missed, however, the group’s main target - the lighted Embassy seal. The blast woke up the neighborhood, but the missile did not explode or the damage would have been far worse.
According to the Greek Minister of Public Order Vyron Polydoras, “it is very likely the work of a domestic terrorist group.” Both the Greek government and the American Embassy have sought to play down the possibility of Islamic or foreign connections. Signs suggest that the perpetrators, in fact, may be members of a miniscule home grown terrorist group named “Revolutionary Struggle ("Epanastatikos Agonas" or EA).”
EA may consist of as few as three to four members, but it is considered by Greek security to be the most active of ten domestic extreme leftist groups. Yet Greek security, with good reason, is also not affixing blame until it learns more.
Thus far, one of the two phone calls claiming credit for the blast went to Hermes Security, the company that had recently taken over the contract to provide Greek guards for the Embassy. The callers assigned culpability to EA.
A written manifesto should follow. . .
UPDATED January 25 re manifesto: According to the January 25, 2007 edition of Kathimerini (English) EA
issued a five page proclamation "claiming responsiblity for the missile attack on the US Embassy and hinted it may target politicians and judges as well as Parliament." EA sent the proclamation - as it has with previous ones - to the leftist Greek news weekly Pontiki which is to publish it today.
EA's predecessor N-17 also sent written messages to the Greek media to publicize its grievances. N-17 manifestos were lengthy and tortured. They intertwined demands for communist revolution with ultra-nationalist religious rants. They were then sent to the Greek leftist mass circulation daily newspaper “Eleftherotypia” for publication.
To investigate the Embassy missile attack, the Greek conservative newspaper Kathimerini reports that the Public Order Ministry has appointed the former head of Greece’s anti-terrorist squad Stelios Syros who is credited for “coordinating the capture of N-17 members” to lead the new investigation’s task force.
Mr. Bush and Condi Rice please take heed – Greek leftist militants are not Muslim but they are anti-American and anti-western
The Greek extreme left has a particularly virulent anti-American strain that runs deep in its veins. If the perpetrator of the Embassy bombing is indeed EA, then the explanation lies not far from home. I understand EA had previously announced its ire at “the current Greek government’s strategic partnership with the US” and that it also believes that the Greek government has become a tool of the US imperialist “New Order.”
The extreme left’s anti-Americanism dates back at least as far as US government support – particularly under Nixon, Agnew and Kissinger - for the seven year long Greek junta (1967-74). The left was far from alone.
Anti-Americanism in Greece, however, originated years before when the US supported the Greek nationalists against the Communists during the divisive Greek Civil War (1944-1949). Anti-American sentiment then continued for decades thereafter- particularly among the left which blamed the US Embassy for interfering in Greek domestic politics.
Close N-17 relationship doubtful
I think Juan Cole’s assessment shortly after Friday’s attack that “The November 17 group is a major suspect, even though it was allegedly disbanded. Its members didn't go anywhere, and their anger over Iraq may have brought them out of retirement” is, at best, premature. Subsequent reports from Greek authorities also question a strong link to this earlier Greek terrorist group.
In fact, Alexandros Giotopoulos, N-17’s leader, and most, if not all, of N-17 members did go somewhere. They went to Greek jails during the summer of 2002 and to the courts of law. Most are still behind bars. Giotopoulos, the N-17 mastermind is there for life, but apparently a couple of N-17 members have subsequently been released.
It is possible that EA or whatever group pulled off Friday’s missile launch is a spin-off of N-17 or more likely a copycat. But even if EA has N-17 links, it would have obtained the Chinese made anti-tank missile that failed to work from a different source and its members are not yet as skilled marksmen.
Related to US foreign policy in the Middle East?
But I do take Cole’s point that there is likely to be a relationship, however tenuous, between the January 12 missile attack against the US Embassy in Athens and US foreign policy in the Middle East - especially the American invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Here’s why: The Bush administration’s policies have so inflamed much of the world’s publics against the US that there exists not only a rationale but also a cushion, and perhaps even passive support for networks or cells of anti-American ultra-nationalist, politically marginalized militants – regardless of religion or location – who are spoiling for a fight.
The very fact that the conservative Greek and American governments maintain excellent relations - and these good relations are not challenged by PASOK, the country’s chief center-left party, as they were in times past - serves only to aggravate the emotions and frustrations of the militant extreme left.
On top of this, Greeks as a people are the most virulently opposed to the Bush administration’s foreign policies of all EU member populations. They have been particularly incensed over the US invasion of Iraq. Post World War II history of US-Greek relations helps explain this. But this also includes the fact that small countries dislike seeing larger ones invade their, or another country’s, territory - not to mention break every international law on the books.
Perhaps this helps to explain the EOS Europe Gallop poll, according to Alan Cowell in the November 16, 2003 New York Times, taken six months after the invasion of Iraq that showed between 85 and 90 percent of Greeks saw President Bush as a threat to world peace – far higher than respondents in any other EU member country.
Anti-US Demonstrations met Rice in April
No surprises then that Condoleezza Rice’s nanosecond visit to Athens April 2006 was met by large anti-American demonstrations in central Athens and smaller ones in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city. She, however, never saw them and they received little or no US media coverage. It’s understandable but unfortunate that she, or at least members of the State Department press corps traveling with her, missed this basic Greek political lesson, but security (American and Greek) kept her and them far away.
Why November 17?
Every year since the junta’s downfall in 1974 an enormous anti-American demonstration has taken place on November 17. The march begins at the country’s Polytechnic University in downtown Athens where the vastly unpopular military junta sent in tanks against the students who were protesting its rule on that date in 1974. The commemorative march ends in front of the American Embassy on Vassilis Sophias.
Small groups of anarchists also use the occasion to vandalize property and smash store windows along the way. 2006 was no exception. It is also possible that EA, or some other Greek far left militant group that hit the American Embassy with the Chinese-made missile on Friday, came out of this anarchist tradition.
If EA is anything like N-17, the earlier Greek terrorist group that killed or wounded at least 23 American, British and Turkish diplomats, military personnel and intelligence officers as well as prominent conservative Greek journalists, politicians, government officials and businessmen between 1975 and 2002, then it is most likely a tiny, closely interconnected network of ultra-nationalist, perhaps – but not necessarily – ultra-Christian Orthodox, revolutionary leftists perhaps now with an updated human rights agenda and more internationalist twist.
During its 27 year history, N-17 too launched rockets against buildings of political or economic significance. This included the Bank of America in Athens as well as a rocket propelled grenade fired into the American Embassy compound. And as Kiesling noted in Kathimerini “this was not the first time American sanitary fixtures had been the victim of Greek revolutionary violence. In August 1972 a bomb destroyed a sink in the women’s lavatory of the U.S. Embassy. It had been planted by future N-17 ideologist Alexandros Giotopoulos.”
As in the January 12 demonstration of Greek terrorism, N-17’s rockets were sometimes, but not always, launched at buildings late at night or in the early morning to make a maximum public relations splash. They also caused little or no harm to the people who worked in them. This was intentional because of the left’s sympathetic views toward and desire to spare what it considers the downtrodden “little” or working people.
Yet, also look at the practicalities: How easy could it be to launch a missile from the middle of a city sidewalk at high noon without being caught?
Greek security, according to the Athens News Agency (Online in English) reporter Pantelis Saitas, has indicated it is interviewing witnesses – so there must have been at least a few people around even at 6 am. It is also reviewing film footage – presumably from security cameras on constant watch over Embassy surroundings.
N-17’s best known and most lethal signature was its assassinations of public figures and eminent conservative Greek businessmen. This included Pavlos Bakoyiannis, a conservative (ND) member and speaker of parliament and the first husband of the current Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyiannis. Bakoyianni was killed outside his apartment in the Kolonaki section of Athens in 1989.
Often however, N-17 murdered its victims through motorcycle drive-by shootings using the same .45 caliber pistol over a span of twenty years and Kiesling eloquently describes his own fears as a US diplomat working at the American Embassy before N-17 was rounded up: “When I was a diplomat I lived with the idea that a motorcycle with two helmeted riders, an unfamiliar car parked alongside mine, could leave my daughter an orphan.”
Although N-17 often got its man, it did not always succeed. When I worked in Athens as Executive Director of the Hellenic American Union between 1981 and 1984, I took an anti-terrorist defensive driving course with American sergeant Robert Judd among others. Shortly thereafter, Judd survived the classic N-17 attack. Judd lived – largely due to his quick reactions and application of the terrorist avoidance skills taught in that hands-on-the-steering-wheel class.
EA’s Three Year Terrorist Record
January 12, 2007 was not the first time EA claimed responsibility for an act of terrorism in Greece. The group has also claimed bombings at a court building in Athens on September 6, 2003 when it first burst upon Greece’s terrorist scene. It bombed the Greek labor ministry on June 2, 2005 and the Greek economic ministry on December 12, 2005: the latter wounded two people.
EA also attempted, but failed, to assassinate Minister of Culture Giorgos Voulgarakis on May 30, 2006 near his home and the group set off a time bomb, its normal weapon of choice, outside a branch of Citibank in Neo Psychico, a near-in Athens suburb, on March 14, 2004.
Meanwhile back in the political mainstream. . .
The leaders of both Greek major political parties almost immediately went on the record to assure the US and others that Greek-US relations remained excellent and to demonstrate that the political will was there to support a thorough and speedy investigation of the attack.
Let’s hope that the already on-going investigation by US and Greek security working together soon turns up N-17’s successor well before it finds a sharp-shooter or trains its members to become better shots.